The Institute for

World Literature
Summer 2021

Seminar by:
Galin Tihanov

Exilic Writing and the Making of World Literature

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Table of Contents
Session 1: Exotopy and Inbetweenness
Psalm 137 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Ovid, "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto" ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Agha Shahid Ali, "When on Route 80 in Ohio" ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Hannah Arendt, "We Refugees" .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 24
Giorgio Agamben, "We Refugees" .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 31

Session 2: Memory and the Languages of Exile

Marc Chagall, My Life ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34
Benjamin Harshav, Marc Chagall and the Lost Jewish World ........................................................................................................................................................................48
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 60

Session 3: Exilic Cosmopolitanism

Eugène Ionesco, The Bald Prima Dona ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 72
Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counter-Notes ................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..90
David Damrosch, "Auerbach in Exile"..................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..97
Galin Tihanov, "Why Did Modern Literary Theory Originate in Central and Eastern Europe? (And Why Is It Now Dead?)" .............................................. 108

Session 4: Exilic Anti-Cosmopolitanism

Nikolai Trubetskoi, "Europe and Mankind" ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 119
Petr Savitskii, "A Turn to the East"........................................................................................................................................................................................................... .129
N.Riasanovsky, "The Emergence of Eurasianism"................................................................................................................................................................................ .131
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Session 5: The Affective Economy of Exile

Krzysztof Kieślowski, "Three Colours: White" (1994)
Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. .146

Session 6: De-Romanticizing Exile

Mori Ogai, "The Boat on the River Takase" ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 161
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ................................................................................................................................................................. 168

Session 7: Homecomers and Boomerangs

Milan Kundera, Ignorance .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. .197

V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 222

Session 8: Reflective Epilogue

There will be no new texts for this session.
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Psalm 137. ESV Bible Online. Web. 21 Mar 2015

137 By the waters of Babylon,

there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
3 For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

4 How shall we sing the Lord's song

in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites

the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
6
from Tristia; Ex Ponto. Ovid. Trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988.
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from Tristia; Ex Ponto. Ovid. Trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988. 11
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from Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate. Ed. A.

Kumar. New York: Routledge, 2004.
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Edward Said. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.
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from The Jew as Pariah. Hannah Arendt. New
York: Grove, 1978.
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Trans. Michael Rocke. Symposium 49:2 (1995). 114-119.
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34 from My Life. Marc Chagall. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
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48 from Marc Chagall and the Lost Jewish World. Benjamin Harshav. New York: Rizzoli, 2006.
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Pnin. Vladimir Nabokov. London: Heinemann, 1957.

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72 from Plays. Vol. 1. Eugène Ionesco. Trans.
Donald Watson. London: Calder, 1958.
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90 from Notes and Counter-Notes. Eugène Ionesco.
Trans. Donald Watson. London: Calder, 1964.
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62
Russian Formalists were the first to see literature as an autonomous domain for
from Common Knowledge 10:1 (2004). 61-81. theoretical investigation, and in their work they steered away from aesthetics,

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
sociology, psychology, and history, while seeking support in linguistics. There
were, in Germany, earlier attempts to take an autonomous approach to art, but
these involved music and the visual arts rather than literature. Heinrich Wölfflin’s

WHY DID MODERN LITERARY dream of a history of art without names was echoed in Osip Brik’s belief that, had
Pushkin never existed, Eugene Onegin would have written itself.3 Such was the

THEORY ORIGINATE IN CENTRAL sway of Wölfflin’s innovation that when Oskar Walzel essayed to free the study
of literature from the dominant framework of cultural history, he fell victim to
AND EASTERN EUROPE? parallels with art history. In proclaiming the theory of the “mutual illumination”
of various arts, Walzel escaped the dangers of social and cultural history at the
(And Why Is It Now Dead?) expense of allowing categories established as tools of art history (“style,” for
example) to intrude on the study of literature.4 The Russian Formalists, however,
were determined to discuss literature in terms of “literariness,” a feature that they
presumed or hoped would provide an explanation for whatever was distinctly lit-
erary. By concentrating on the literary “device,” especially in the early phase of
Galin Tihanov their work, the Formalists were leaving literature to its own devices, uncontrolled
by, and irreducible to, ethics, religion, or politics.
The later chronological limit, the early 1990s, I have set primarily with
developments in philosophy and cultural theory in mind. The 1910s signaled the
ambition of literary studies to emancipate itself from the master discourses of
At the outset of the twenty-first century, we seem at last positioned to recognize philosophy (though even then, literary studies worked, not infrequently, in tac-
and admit the demise of literary theory as a distinct discipline of scholarship. tical collaboration with aesthetics). But from the mid-1970s onward, and espe-
Even the most dedicated proponents of theory are busy spelling out the dimen- cially in the 1980s, literary theory was once again — now through the powerful
sions of its irremediable crisis.1 In retrospect, one can locate literary theory impact of deconstruction — swerving back in the direction of philosophy. In
within a period of some eighty years, from its inception in the late 1910s until championing ideas originating with Nietzsche and Heidegger, deconstruction
perhaps the early 1990s. The beginnings of the discipline were marked by the set a new agenda, for which literature was no more than a business among oth-
activities of the Russian Formalists. Wolfgang Iser’s turn in the late 1980s from ers. Thinking and writing about literature thus lost the edge of specificity and
reception theory and phenomenology of reading to what he called “literary uniqueness, and the boundary between literary and nonliterary texts, solemnly
anthropology” presaged the end of literary theory per se, and the death of Yuri guarded since the Formalists’ time, was rendered porous and eventually insignifi-
cant. Similarly, feminism, postcolonialism, and New Historicism were all ways
Lotman in 1993 confirmed it. Lotman had in any case come gradually to embrace
of reading more than just literary texts; they were strategies of cultural theory,
semiotics as a global theory of culture rather than a narrowly conceived theory
and many literary theorists tried to avoid them out of fear lest these methods con-
of literature.2
jure back the spirit of Geistesgeschichte. By the 1970s, however, there were clear
The earlier chronological boundary is by now commonly recognized: the
signals, particularly in the writings of the Tartu School, that literary theory would
1. See, e.g., the forum “Theory and the University,” 2. Wolfgang Iser, Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Grund-
itself try (in an increasingly ambitious union with semiotics) to assume the role
Literary Research/Recherche Littéraire 18.35 (spring–summer züge einer Literaturanthropologie (Frankfurt am Main:
2001): 8 – 41. Suhrkamp, 1991). Unless otherwise noted, all translations
are mine. 3. Osip Brik, “The So-Called Formal Method,” 4. Oskar Walzel, Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste
in Formalist Theory, ed. Lawrence Michael (Berlin: Reuther and Richard, 1917).
O’Toole and Ann Shukman, Russian Poetics in
Common Knowledge 10:1
Translation, vol. 4 (Colchester: University of
Copyright 2004 by Duke University Press Essex, 1977), 90.

61
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63
of a general theory of culture, though success would mean by definition the end

64
advances in literary theory in its second “golden age,” the 1960s and 1970s, were
of literary theory proper. hardly more than elaborations and variations on themes, problems, and solutions

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
Hence my assumption that the early 1990s represents the last stage in the played out in the interwar period in Central and Eastern Europe. French struc-
protracted demise of literary theory as an autonomous branch of the humanities. turalism, however refined (and sometimes reluctant to acknowledge its prede-
The abandonment of literary theory in favor of projects in semiotics as a form of cessors), was of course made possible by the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. But
cultural theory (Lotman), and in favor of forays into philosophical anthropology structuralism also depended on the achievements of Russian Formalism and the
(Iser), were symptoms of ill health and of a decline in self-sufficiency. The main Prague Linguistic Circle,7 as well as on the formulation of the principles of pho-
cause of these transformations was the changing status of literature and its con- nology by Nikolai Trubetskoi and Roman Jakobson in the 1930s.8 Narratology—
sumption in a postindustrial society, increasingly globalized and dependent on notwithstanding the differences discernible in its later versions (those of Claude
an incessant flow of information and image-based communication. Over the past Lévi-Strauss, Algirdas J. Greimas, Claude Bremond, Gérard Genette, Eberhard
two decades, the economy of leisure has also changed dramatically, especially in Lämmert, Dorrit Cohn, Mieke Bal) — never quite severed itself from the legacy
the more affluent West: depersonalized and mediated but commercially suc- of Vladimir Propp, whose Morphology of the Folktale appeared as early as 1928.9
cessful forms of entertainment make the experience of private reading ever more The continental version of reception theory in the 1970s was anticipated in works

Tihanov •
of the Prague Circle, above all those of Felix Vodička, who borrowed somewhat
demanding by comparison. Reading now has to compete, moreover, with sources
freely from Ingarden.10 Finally, Marxist literary theory in its later heyday was
of information that mobilize simultaneously a wider range of senses and present
deeply influenced by the work of Georg Lukács in the 1930s.
their material in a manner we think of as companionable (“consumer-friendly”).
On the other hand, it is obvious, too, that there have been trends in mod-
“The literary work of art” (Roman Ingarden’s title is both dated and nostalgic) is
ern literary theory that evolved away from the determining effects of Eastern and
no longer endowed with special status; it competes for attention as one of many
commodities in the cultural marketplace.
7. The question of chronology is not irrelevant here: 177–84; Roy Harris, “Jakobson’s Saussure,” in Saussure and
Jakobson set forth some of the important principles of his His Interpreters (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
future understanding of poetry in a talk at the Moscow 2001), 94 –108.
Chronotope Linguistic Circle in 1919 (also attended by Mayakovsky),
8. On the intellectual origins of structuralism in Eastern
Once we come to realize that literary theory is passé, it becomes possible to con- which was published in 1921 as Noveishaia russkaia poeziia
and Central Europe and on the connections between Saus-
[The latest Russian poetry] (Prague: Tip. “Politika,” 1921).
template the subject historically, to establish its dynamic, and to estimate the sure’s linguistic doctrines and those of Trubetskoi, Jakob-
Pomorska points out that Jakobson was not acquainted
extent to which it should be taken as culturally specific. Thus chronotope is the son, and the Prague Circle, see Sériot, Structure et total-
with Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale until 1920–21
ité: Les origines intellectuelles du structuralisme en Europe
summary term for this section, in which my thesis is relatively simple: I submit (Krystyna Pomorska, “The Autobiography of a Scholar,”
centrale et orientale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
in Language, Poetry and Poetics: The Generation of the 1890s—
that modern literary theory was born in the decades between the World Wars, Jakobson, Trubetzkoy, Majakovskij, ed. Pomorska et al.
1999).

in Eastern and Central Europe — in Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland — [Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987], 6). However, Jakob- 9. For a study of Propp’s Russian predecessors, see Heda
son himself drew attention to the fact that Sergei Kart- Jason and Dmitrii Segal, “Precursors of Propp: Formalist
due to a set of intersecting cultural determinations and institutional factors.5
sevskii was the first to familiarize the young Moscow lin- Theories of Narrative in Early Russian Ethnopoetics,”
Before specifying those determinations and factors, I ought to recapitulate guists with Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale in PTL 2 (1977): 471– 516; see also Peter Gilet, Vladimir
the contribution of Eastern and Central Europe to later developments in liter- 1917–19 (cf. Roman Jakobson, “Sergej Karcevskij: August Propp and the Universal Folktale (New York: Peter Lang,
28, 1884 –November 7, 1955,” Cahiers Ferdinand de Saus- 1998).
ary theory.6 They would be difficult to overemphasize. Indeed, the supposed sure 14 [1956]: 10). The first portions of Saussure’s work
10. On Vodička’s appropriation of Ingarden, see Herta
on likely anagrams in Latin poetry, which posed the ques-
Schmid, “Zum Begriff der ästhetischen Konkretisation im
5. Despite the recent trend of bringing together Central 6. For studies in English of East and Central European tion of phonetic sequences and regularities in verse that
tschechischen Strukturalismus,” Sprache im technischen
and Eastern Europe under the umbrella designation literary theory in comparative perspective, see Peter was also to occupy the Formalists, especially Jakobson and
Zeitalter, no. 36 (1970): 290 – 318; Rolf Fieguth, “Rezep-
Brik, did not appear in print before 1954, when Jean
“East-Central Europe,” I prefer to preserve their differ- Steiner, “The Roots of Structuralist Esthetics,” in The tion contra falsches und richtiges Lesen? Oder Mißver-
Starobinski published some of Saussure’s work in Mercure
ences, which in turn accentuate the many important sim- Prague School: Selected Writings, 1929–1946, ed. Steiner ständnisse mit Ingarden,” Sprache im technischen Zeitalter,
de France. On Jakobson’s (mis)appropriation and criticism
ilarities in the emergence of literary theory in these lands. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 174 – 219 (an no. 38 (1971): 142 – 59; Doležel, “Structuralism of the
of Saussure, see, e.g., Ladislav Matejka, “Jakobson’s
For a powerful restatement of the differences between excellent comparison of Russian Formalism and the Prague Circle,” in From Formalism to Poststructuralism, ed.
Response to Saussure’s Cours,” in Jakobson entre l’Est et
Central and Eastern Europe, see Iver B. Neumann, Prague School); Endre Bojtár, Slavic Structuralism (Amster- Roman Selden, vol. 8 of The Cambridge History of Literary
l’Ouest (1915–1939): Un episode de l’histoire de la culture
“Europe’s Post-Cold War Memory of Russia: Cui bono?” dam: J. Benjamins, 1985); Jurij Striedter, Literary Structure, Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
européenne, ed. Françoise Gadet and Patrick Sériot, Cahiers
in Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Evolution, and Value: Russian Formalism and Czech Struc- esp. 54 – 55.
de l’ILSL, no. 9 (Lausanne: University of Lausanne, 1997),
Presence of the Past, ed. Jan-Werner Müller (Cambridge: turalism Reconsidered (Cambridge: Harvard University
Cambridge University Press 2002) 121 36 Press 1989); Lubomír Doležel Occidental Poetics: Tradition
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Central European theory. A particularly good case in point is hermeneutics,

66
slovakian theory reflected a growing discontent with scholarly positivism, as well
which was widely present in the German humanities before being put to use in as—most crucially—a need to confront, make sense of, and give support to fresh

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
literary theory by E. D. Hirsch in the United States. In Germany, hermeneu- and radical modes of creative writing that were making themselves felt in the
tics was slower to become literary theory as such, for it has always been more than futurist environment of the Russian avant-garde and the largely surrealist milieu
literary. Nurtured by its deep roots in German theology and philosophy, of Czechoslovakia. Thinking about literature, in other words, altered radically in
hermeneutics (especially as practiced by H.-G. Gadamer) has had the status of the earlier twentieth century because of changes, on the one hand, in literature
philosophy of culture and cultural history — and this was so even in the case of itself, and changes in — exfoliations of — some important metadiscourses of con-
works more obviously oriented toward literary analysis, such as Wilhelm tinental philosophy. The separation of these two sets of factors is, of course, a
Dilthey’s Poetry and Experience. It was only with the explorations of Hans Robert heuristic abstraction, but it is both convenient for our purposes and to a large
Jauss, and with Peter Szondi’s work on literature (specifically Hölderlin), that degree verifiable.
German hermeneutics unequivocally assumed the distinct profile of a literary Before dwelling in more detail on these two scenarios, I should emphasize
theory.11 one vital point in my account. In three of these four instances (the Russian For-
In other words, the emergence of literary theory was conditional upon the malists, the Prague Circle, and Roman Ingarden), we are dealing with a resur-

Tihanov •
gence of creative freedom in the aftermath of radical historical events. In both
process of disintegration and modification of monolithic philosophical approaches
Czechoslovakia and Poland (if not in Horthy’s Hungary), the interwar years were
that occurred around the time of World War I. Though hermeneutics did not
a period of a secondary national revival after the disintegration of the Austro-
develop into a literary theory during the 1920s and 1930s, other philosophical
Hungarian Empire. It is essential to realize that both Russian Formalism and,
paradigms were transformed to generate theoretical approaches more specifically
even more straightforwardly, the Prague Circle were inherently linked to the
germane to the study of literature. That sort of transformation is one of the major
process of constructing a new state with a new political identity; and there was
ways in which modern literary theory was born. The strongest case is, doubtless,
a neo-Romantic pride in belonging to the vanguard of these transformations.
the application of Marxism to the interpretation of literature in the 1920s and
Jakobson and Brik’s close association with Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as the
1930s, most seminally in the work of Georg Lukács, a Hungarian Jew; but also
gravitation of a number of Formalists to the Left Front of Art and its journals Lef
crucial are the modifications, produced roughly at the same time, of Husserlian
and Novyi Lef, furnish incontestable evidence. What is more, we find a striking
philosophy in the work of Ingarden, the Polish theoretician who rendered phe-
parallel in the Russian Formalists’ and Prague Circle’s decisions to address in
nomenology pertinent to the study of literary art.12
their scholarship political figures of the highest profile. The Prague Circle in
A second venue we need to explore when discussing the birth of modern 1930 honored President Masaryk’s eightieth birthday with a volume entitled
literary theory is that exemplified by the collective efforts — and for some years, Masaryk and Language, featuring contributions by Jakobson and Jan Mukařovský.
the joint efforts — of the Russian Formalists and the Prague Circle. The emer- In 1924, the Formalists published a number of interconnected articles devoted
gence of literary theory in Russia and Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s fol- to Lenin’s language and style.13 Although this latter move may appear merely
lowed a path different from those of Lukács and Ingarden. Russian and Czecho- pragmatic, if not ironic or cynical, the Formalists’ engagement with construc-
tivism, the literature of the fact, and other developments in leftist art was much
11. Hans Robert Jauss, “Limits and Tasks of Literary Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns more than a perfunctory demonstration of loyalty or a ploy designed to gain
Hermeneutics,” trans. Johanna Pick Marguiles, Diogenes Hopkins University Press, 1978). See also Eugene Hannes tactical advantages.14 After all, the two most seminal and innovative theoreti-
109 (1980): 92 –119; Peter Szondi, Einführung in die liter- Falk, The Poetics of Roman Ingarden (Chapel Hill: Univer- cal pieces of the mature Formalists — Yuri Tynianov’s “On Literary Evolution”
arische Hermeneutik, ed. Jean Bollack and Helen Stierlin sity of North Carolina Press, 1981), and Peter McCormick
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975); Szondi, On Textual and Bohdan Dziemidok, eds., On the Aesthetics of Roman (1927) and Boris Eikhenbaum’s “Literature and the Literary Everyday [byt]”
Understanding and Other Essays, trans. Harvey Mendelsohn Ingarden (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1989), as well as two
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). earlier articles: Victor Michael Hamm, “The Ontology of
13. See the contributions by Viktor Shklovsky, Boris failed dialogue: From the history of the relations between
the Literary Work of Art: Roman Ingarden’s ‘Das liter-
12. The literature on Ingarden, especially in languages Eikhenbaum, Lev Iakubinskii, Iurii Tynianov, Boris the Formal School and political power], Shestye Tyni-
arische Kunstwerk,’ ” in The Critical Matrix, ed. Paul R.
other than Polish and German, is still manageable. In Kazanskii, and Boris Tomashevskii in Lef, no. 1 (1924): anovskie chteniia: Tezisy dokladov i materialy dlia obsuzhdeniia
Sullivan (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press,
English, see above all George G. Grabowicz, introduction 53 –148. (Riga: 1992), 210; Carol Any, Boris Eikhenbaum: Voices of
1961), 171– 209; Hans Rudnick, “Roman Ingarden’s Lit-
to The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Border- a Russian Formalist (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
erary Theory,” Ingardeniana. Analecta Husserliana 4 (1976): 14. Cf., e.g., Aleksandr Galushkin, “Neudavshiisia dialog:
lines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature, by Roman Press, 1994), 90.
105 –19. Iz istorii vzaimootnoshenii formal’noi shkloly i vlasti” [A
Ingarden, trans. Grabowicz (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press 1973) xlv lxx as well as Iser The Act of
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(1927) —were both published in Na literaturnom postu [On literary guard], the

68
We should also recall that Jakobson, Trubetskoi, and Bogatyrev were writing in
journal of a radical leftist faction (the RAPP). (Eikhenbaum’s article indicated his at least two languages, as were Lukács and Ingarden, who availed themselves of

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
departure from Formalism to sociology of literature, for which he was criticized German as well as their native Hungarian and Polish. Lukács himself spent more
both by fellow Formalists such as Viktor Shklovsky and — less expectedly — by than two decades away from home, in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow.19
his own orthodox Marxist disciples.) The lives of Lukács, Jakobson, Trubetskoi, Bogatyrev, Shklovsky, and also
Thus, the attitude of the Formalists in Russia and the Prague Circle in of René Wellek, urge us to consider the enormous importance of exile and emi-
Czechoslovakia to political power ought to be reevaluated in the light of their gration for the birth of modern literary theory in Eastern and Central Europe.
active engagement with the cultural agendas of the two newly established states.15 Exile and emigration were the extreme embodiment of heterotopia and poly-
Yet the shaping force of the political environment should not be overstated. Mod- glossia. Drastic historical changes had brought on traumas of dislocation, but also
ern literary theory developed at the intersection between national enthusiasms and and concomitantly, the productive insecurity of needing to use more than one
a cultural cosmopolitanism that transcended local encapsulation and monoglos- language and live in more than one culture.20 The same pattern became pro-
sia. For a number of years, the activities of the Russian Formalists took place in ductive again after World War II when, in the 1950s through the 1970s, the cen-
a climate of enhanced mobility and benefited from the exchange of ideas between ter of theory gradually shifted toward France and francophone theorists: the

Tihanov •
Romanian-Jewish Lucien Goldmann, the Lithuanian-born Algirdas Greimas,
metropolitan and émigré Russian culture. The most gifted ambassadors among
and — on the crest of another wave of emigration — the Bulgarian-born Tzvetan
the Formalists were Shklovsky, during the time he spent in Berlin, and Jakobson,
Todorov and Julia Kristeva significantly enriched semiotics, narratology, struc-
while in Czechoslovakia.16 In equal measure, the foundations of Formalism were
turalism, poststructuralism, Marxist literary theory, psychoanalysis, and femi-
laid by scholars, many of them Jewish, who were steeped in more than one cul-
nism. Their work came to embody the potential of what Edward Said was later
tural tradition and felt at ease with the ethnic and cultural diversity of both Mos-
to praise (when analyzing the impact of Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness)
cow and imperial St. Petersburg: Jakobson, Brik, Eikhenbaum, and the Polish lin-
as “travelling theory”: “The point of theory is . . . to travel, always to move
guist (of French descent) Baudouin de Courtenay, among others. Jakobson is a
beyond its confinements, to emigrate, to remain in a sense in exile.”21
particularly important example: his emigration from Russia to Czechoslovakia was
Yet exile and emigration in the 1920s and 1930s differed — in their cultural
crucial in internationalizing the Prague Circle, as were his cooperation with Peter
status — from the parallel experience after World War II. While the newcom-
Bogatyrev and the Russian émigré Nikolai Trubetskoi (based in Vienna). Jakobson
ers on the Paris intellectual scene (Greimas, Todorov, Kristeva) received their
was also associated with Tynianov, who stayed in Russia but was involved in the
doctorates from French universities, the prominent figures of the generation
activities of his Prague colleagues.17 Thus the work of the Circle proceeded in a
context that rendered narrow nationalistic concerns anachronistic. Here is a telling
19. In the end Lukács would feel a stranger even in ed. Robert M. Polhemus and Roger B. Henkle (Stanford,
piece of evidence from the memoirs of a contemporary: Budapest, as reports by those who knew him in the late CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 264. In this article,
1940s suggest. Too Eastern for the West and too West- Said refined some of the arguments of his earlier article
The language of the meetings was another characteristic of the Circle. ern for the East, he seemed to have exemplified the fluid- “Travelling Theory,” in The World, the Text, and the Critic
Seldom was a Czech without an accent heard. Even those who hardly ity entailed in being a Mitteleuropäer, with all its blessings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 226 – 47,
and predicaments (cf. Károly Kókai, Im Nebel: Der junge where he constructed a somewhat rigid opposition between
knew how to speak any other language but their native Czech acquired
Georg Lukács und Wien [Vienna: Böhlau, 2001]: 235 – 36). the environments in which Lukács’s theory of reification
a kind of queer pronunciation after some time. The guests from abroad was born (Budapest) and appropriated (Paris). Suffice it to
20. In a different context and with different tasks in mind,
added to this linguistic confusion. There would be, for example, a guest say that History and Class Consciousness was only partly the
Stephen Greenblatt forcefully asserts that in order to write
speaker from Denmark. He had to speak in French or German, or in a product of what Said called “the Hungary of 1919” (237):
cultural history we must “understand colonization, exile,
Slavic language, and this he did with an accent, of course.18 a good half of the essays included in the book were writ-
emigration, wandering, contamination . . . , for it is these
ten by Lukács in exile in Vienna, in a somewhat different
disruptive forces that principally shape the history and dif-
cultural and political context. For an early discussion of
fusion of languages, and not a rooted sense of cultural
15. See also Galin Tihanov, “Marxism and Formalism 17. Cf. Jakobson, “Yuri Tynianov in Prague,” in The Prob- the limitations of “travelling theory” in the present glob-
legitimacy” (Stephen Greenblatt, “Racial Memory and
Revisited: Notes on the 1927 Leningrad Dispute,” Literary lem of Verse Language, by Yuri Tynianov, ed. and trans. alistic climate, see James Clifford, “Notes on Travel and
Literary History,” in Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue
Research/Recherche Littéraire 19.37–38 (2002): 69 – 77. Michael Sosa and Brent Harvey (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, Theory,” in Traveling Theories, Traveling Theorists, ed.
on Theory, ed. Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdes [Ox-
1981), 135 – 40. James Clifford and Vivek Dhareshwar (Santa Cruz: Group
16. On the complex semantics of nostalgia and estrange- ford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 61).
for the Critical Study of Colonial Discourse and the Cen-
ment in Shklovsky’s exilic texts, see Svetlana Boym, 18. Milada Součková, “The Prague Linguistic Circle: A
21. Edward W. Said, “Travelling Theory Reconsidered,” ter for Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa
“Estrangement as a Lifestyle: Shklovsky and Brodsky,” Collage,” in Sound, Sign, and Meaning: Quinquagenary of the
in Critical Reconstructions: The Relationship of Fiction and Life, Cruz, 1989), 177 – 85, esp. 184 – 85.
Poetics Today 17.4 (winter 1996): 511– 30. Prague Linguistic Circle, ed. Matejka (Ann Arbor: Depart-
ment of Slavic Languages and Literatures University of
112
69
active in the 1920s and 1930s were educated and had matured in their countries
and cultures of origin (the exception is Jakobson, who received his doctorate in
The Disregardable “Second World”
Czechoslovakia). Similarly, while Greimas, Todorov, Kristeva, and to a lesser
extent also Goldmann, may be confidently described as culturally assimilated,
Lukács, Jakobson, Bogatyrev, and Trubetskoi, in what was one of the most pro-
ductive stages of their careers, did not go so far in adopting their host cultures.
More exiles than established émigrés, they were immersed in a genuinely het-
erocultural environment and, more important, made a point of preserving a fully
bilingual existence as intellectuals.
The theorists’ personal circumstance in exile is the most dramatic and rec-
ognizable manifestation of deeper structural reasons for the direction that liter-
ary theory took, and to argue from exile alone would leave out of the picture out-
standing theorists like Ingarden, Mukařovský, and Vodička. We require a more
Tihanov
inclusive account, one that explains the conditions that shaped the work of both
the exiles and those who stayed behind in the newly formed independent states.
Although these countries gained independence from the Austro-Hungarian
empire (in Poland’s case, also from Germany and Russia), national pride and zeal-
ous labor on behalf of the new states did not in any sense mean a break from the
German cultural orbit. In Prague, a German university continued its activities;
intellectuals educated in Germany remained leading authorities in various
spheres of Hungarian and Polish social life. German periodicals and bilingual
editions were printed and freely circulated. The Hungarian German-language
newspaper Pester Lloyd, in which Lukács as a young man published several texts,
appeared in Budapest for eight decades from the 1850s until World War II. Now
on firmer ground, more stable, and enjoying support from the young indepen-
dent states, the Czech and Polish intelligentsia regarded the German cultural pres-
ence with less anxiety. In Czechoslovakia, the Prague Circle distanced itself from
the parochialism of anti-German purism; the Circle also recognized the existence
of Slovak as a separate language, though the constitution of the new republic
spoke of a single “Czechoslovak” nation and a single “Czechoslovak” language.22
It was not by accident that the new departures in linguistics and literary theory
in Czechoslovakia should have originated in Prague rather than Bratislava, whose
scholarly community feared lest the Slovak language be overwhelmed by Czech
influence. More reassured of its own strength and possessing a more stable posi-
tion in society, Czech academia was better placed to mediate between its own
inheritance and the new developments in European, including German, thought.
Indicative of the new terms of the Czech-German dialogue after World War I
was the polemic on the place of the smaller Central European nation-states in
22. Cf. L’ubomir Ďurovič, “The Beginnings of Struc-
turalism in Slovakia and the Bratislava Linguistic Circle,”
in Matejka Sound Sign and Meaning 54
70
the political future of Europe: while Germany wanted to see them subjected to
German cultural supremacy and strategic goals, these countries were prepared
COMMON KNOWLEDGE
to harness the German legacy to the advantage of their own refashioning as mod-
ern, forward-looking, and uncompromisingly independent states. Friedrich Nau-
mann’s Mitteleuropa (1915) and Tomás Masaryk’s book The New Europe (1918)
seem to be the clearest statements of these divergent views.23
Thus Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary (though in Hungary’s case for
different political reasons) attentively followed German intellectual developments
(and in the case of the Prague Circle, also Russian ones), but they did so from a
pragmatic perspective consistent with their independent political existence. After
World War I, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary shared the cultural identity
of countries that, due to their German legacy, were more than enclosed nation-
states but not in themselves empires. Their ambiguous status meant that cultural
•
intersections and polyglossia were, in these countries, a matter of course. They
found themselves neither too close (with the exception of Horthy’s Hungary) nor
too far from German (and Russian) culture—and this cultural location was appar-
ently propitious for the rise and cultivation of new directions in thinking about
language and texts. The possibility of “estranging” the sanctity and naturalness of
one’s own literature by analyzing it in another language or by refracting it through
the prism of another culture seems to be of paramount significance for the emer-
gence of modern literary theory. It is symptomatic that Fritz Mauthner, in his
memoirs, attributed his later interest in the psychology and philosophy of lan-
guage to the condition of polyglossia in Prague before World War I: “I don’t know
how a Jew born in a Slavonic district of Austria would not be driven to [take up]
linguistics; he would learn to understand simultaneously no fewer than three lan-
guages”: German, Czech, and Hebrew.24 It is equally characteristic that one of the
23. For debates on “Mitteleuropa”/“Central Europe,” see Gerard Delanty, “The Resonance of Mitteleuropa [Cen-
Roman Szporluk, “Defining ‘Central Europe’: Power, Pol- tral Europe]: A Habsburg Myth or Antipolitics?” Theory,
itics, and Culture,” Cross Currents 1 (1982): 30 – 38; Milan Culture, and Society 13.4 (November 1996): 93 –108. For
Kundera’s influential text “The Tragedy of Central a historical survey, see Jacques Le Rider, La Mitteleuropa
Europe,” New York Review of Books, April 26, 1984, 35; (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), and the
Brodsky’s reply “Why Milan Kundera Is Wrong about summary discussion in Heikki Mikkeli, Europe as an Idea
Dostoevsky,” New York Times, February 17, 1985, 31; Jenö and an Identity (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1998), esp.
Szücs, “Three Historical Regions of Europe,” in Civil Soci- chap. 9. On Russia’s place in discussions of Central
ety and the State, ed. John Keane (London: Verso, 1988), Europe, see Aleksei Miller, “Tema Tsentral’noi Evropy:
291– 332; Ferenc Fehér, “On Making Central Europe,” Istoriia, sovremennye diskursy i mesto v nikh Rossii” [The
Eastern European Politics and Societies 3.3 (1989): 412 – 47; theme of Central Europe: History, contemporary dis-
George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood, eds., In Search of Cen- courses, and Russia’s place in them], Novoe literaturnoe
tral Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 1989); Matejka, obozrenie, no. 52 (2001): 75 – 96, and Iver B. Neumann,
“Milan Kundera’s Central Europe,” Cross Currents 9 Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and Inter-
(1990): 127 – 34; Robin Okey, “Central Europe/Eastern national Relations (London: Routledge, 1996).
Europe: Behind the Definitions,” Past and Present 137
24. Fritz Mauthner, Erinnerungen (Munich: G. Müller,
(November 1992): 102–33; Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern
1918), 32 – 33.
Europe (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994);
 113

71
first journals of comparative literature, Acta Litterarum Comparationis (1877–90),

72
from the mid-1930s as in that of Lukács or Ingarden.) 27 Typically, Ingarden,
should be edited in the multicultural city of Klausenburg (in Hungarian, Kolozsvár; writing The Literary Work of Art in Lwów, proclaimed in the preface that,

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
in Romanian, Cluj ).25 “although the main subject of my investigations is the literary work, or the lit-
The process of crossing cultures was, however, uneven. It was hampered erary work of art, the ultimate motives for my work on this subject are of a gen-
by monological and chauvinistic trends in Hungary (where there was a strong eral philosophical nature, and they far transcend this particular subject.”28 Phe-
populist, anti-Romanian, anti-Slovak, and anti-Semitic current), as well as in nomenology was the guiding star of Ingarden’s investigations, yet in a fashion
Poland under the Piĺsudski regime. Appropriating literature theoretically meant suggesting a critical appropriation and alteration of Husserl’s premises. When
being able to transcend its (and one’s own) national embeddedness by electing to discussing the gradual disintegration of philosophical metadiscourses such as
position oneself as an outsider contemplating its abstract laws. That feat was not phenomenology and Marxism, we need to be careful to discern their traces in the
always feasible in undemocratic political environments. Jakobson, in an article subsequently emancipated theoretical narratives of literary theory and/or aes-
titled “About the Premises of the Prague Linguistic School” (1934), presented thetics. The weight of phenomenology varied from environment to environment.
somewhat idealistically the strengths of Czech and Central European interwar Its influence was of the first importance for Ingarden, but less systematic and
intellectual life, while choosing to disregard the harsh reality of cultural com- powerful on Russian Formalism, where Gustav Shpet was the main intermedi-

Tihanov
petition (and often conflict or oppression) in the region:
Czechoslovakia lies at the crossroads of various cultures and its distinc-
tive cultural character throughout history . . . has consisted in the cre-
ative merging of streams whose sources are at some distance from one
another. The great charm of Czech art and social ideology during the
most productive periods of its history stems from the masterful crossing
of diverse, at times even contradictory, currents.26
However beset with difficulties and countered by adverse political condi-
tions, Central Europe now resembled a subcontinent with its own distinct if
somewhat self-enclosed culture. (The work of the Prague Circle remained on the
whole poorly known in Europe, except perhaps among Slavic scholars, down
until the 1960s.) But it was here that the impulses of the dominant Western
philosophical traditions could be bent and transformed without facile irrever-
ence, but also without timidity and imitative self-abnegation.
•
ary between German phenomenology and the Formalists; nor was the impact
of phenomenology especially strong on the Prague Circle.29 Jakobson was the
one clear exception in both schools.30 His theory of rhythm and verse was under-
written by a phenomenological understanding of “poetical time” as “time of
expectation” (Erwartungszeit), a concept forged on the frontier of phenomenol-
ogy and Gestalt psychology.31
But returning to Lukács and Ingarden, neither thought of himself consis-
tently as a literary theorist. Certainly the intellectual traditions that Lukács inher-
ited or adopted through his Hungarian-Jewish-German milieu in the first two
decades of the last century were those of aesthetics and the philosophy of culture.
His later attention to literary theory, in the 1930s, in particular the theory of
genre and the novel — and even his self-definition at the time as a literary
theorist —were the result of frustrated hopes to accommodate art in a larger
philosophical framework. Lukács’s early career, his attempts to fit in the Hei-
delberg environment of systematic, predominantly neo-Kantian, philosophy of

27. There is a substantial body of literature on Czech Structuralism, and Soviet Semiotics,” PTL 1 (1976):
Mukařovsk ý; most recently, see Vladimir Macura and 153 – 96, esp. 164 – 65. On the Prague Linguistic Circle
First Scenario: Re-forming Philosophy Herta Schmid, eds., Jan Mukařovský and the Prague and phenomenology, see Oleg Sus, “On the Genetic Pre-
School/und die Prager Schule (Potsdam: Ústav pro českou conditions of Czech Structuralist Semiology and Seman-
This conclusion about the relationship between modern literary theory, as it literaturu AV ČR, Universität Potsdam, 1999). Of partic- tics: An Essay on Czech and German Thought,” Poetics 4
developed in Central Europe, and the standard metadiscourses of philosophy ular interest from a comparative perspective might be Lot- (1972): 28 – 54, esp. 30.
man’s posthumously published account: Iurii Lotman, “Ian
applies — perhaps especially — to the work of Lukács and Ingarden. Both set out 30. See, above all, Elmar Holenstein, Roman Jakobson’s
Mukarzhovskii — teoretik iskusstva” [Jan Mukařovsk ý, a
to make a contribution to continental philosophy and ended up practicing lit- Approach to Language: Phenomenological Structuralism, trans.
theoretician of art], in Ian Mukarzhovskii, Issledovaniia po
Catherine Schelbert and Tarisius Schelbert (Bloomington:
erary theory and aesthetics. (Literary theory never managed to emancipate itself estetike i teorii iskusstva [Studies on aesthetics and the the-
Indiana University Press, 1976).
ory of art], ed. Lotman and Oleg M. Malevich (Moscow:
entirely from aesthetics, a trend one can observe as much in Mukařovský’s work Iskusstvo, 1994), 8 – 32. 31. See Jakobson, O cheshskom stikhe preimushchestvenno v
sopostavlenii s russkim [On Czech verse, primarily in con-
28. Ingarden, Literary Work of Art, lxxii.
trast with Russian], Brown University Slavic Reprints, vol.
29. For a brief account of Shpet’s role, see Douwe Fok- 6 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1969), 19.
25. See Moritz Csáky, “Die Ambivalenz der Moderne in 26. Quoted in František Galan, Historic Structures: The
kema, “Continuity and Change in Russian Formalism,
Zentraleuropa,” Lukács: Jahrbuch der Internationalen Georg- Prague School Project, 1928–1946 (London: Croom Helm,
Lukács Gesellschaft 4 (2000): 167 87 here 180 1985) xii
114

73
culture and art, ended up in embittered disillusionment with the metropolitan

74
literary theory, as autonomous branches of scholarship.36 With Lukács’s articles
German tradition of scholarship. He abandoned his attempts at a systematic phi- on realism and the historical novel, literary theory on the Left finally gained

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
losophy of art (to which he would return, but from a Marxist perspective, only in firmer ground and respectable standing: it joined an established mode of inquiry,
the 1960s) in favor of work on the social aspects of literature.32 pursued internationally beyond the level of political expedience. Characteristi-
Both Lukács and Ingarden, in their own ways, sought to break free from cally, Lukács’s concept of realism was more than a weapon in the political strug-
the neo-Kantian philosophy of art. Ingarden did so by embracing a modified gles of the Left in the 1930s: he was responding to Hegel’s notion of totality,
Husserlian approach, which allowed him to include in his account of the literary which had featured prominently in History and Class Consciousness. Lukács was in
work of art the layer of “represented objects,” to which he thought the neo- equal measure replying to the neo-Kantian juxtaposition of essence and appear-
Kantians gave insufficient prominence. Lukács followed a different path. He ance, and to the feeble attempts of Lebensphilosophie to reconcile form and life, a
drew on his earlier work concerning genre, in particular his History of the Devel- problem central to Lukács’s theorizing from the start. His passion for realism was
opment of Modern Drama. In 1910 he had written an article on the theory of lit- enthusiasm for a literary form that cancels itself (a paradoxically creative act,
erary history in which he posed, albeit in a compromised fashion, the question of according to Engels) in order to yield to the vigor and richness of life. Realism
the social nature of form. But it remains clear that Lukács’s most significant con- offers the ideal situation in which the writer neither imitates reality nor departs

Tihanov •
tribution to literary theory — his work in the 1930s on realism and the novel — from it. If realistic works voluntarily surrender their specificity and significance
in the service of transparency, then realism concerns nothing less than the rec-
followed his engagement, in a rather unorthodox way, with Marxism as a philo-
onciliation of culture and life.
sophical metadiscourse in need of further “concretization.” His History and Class
Consciousness (1923) laid the foundation for an understanding of Marxism that was
compatible with more holistic and culture-based approaches and that challenged
Second Scenario: Re-forming Literature
crude materialism. It is this “revisionist” strain in Lukács’s Marxism that enabled
Having briefly explored the facilitating role played by the disintegration and
him to reclaim the classical examples of the nineteenth-century bourgeois novel
transformation of philosophical metadiscourses, we may turn to our second
as models that the new (socialist and proletarian) novel should try to emulate.
premise or scenario: that modern literary theory emerged in Eastern and Cen-
Lukács’s writing on realism and the novel, done mostly during his time in Mos-
tral Europe as a response to radical changes in literature and its social relevance.
cow, placed him in an internationally constituted field of literary theory to which
The history of the interaction between literary theory and literature among the
he had not before fully belonged. This field was shaped by the Prague Circle’s
Russian Formalists and in the Prague Circle is by now well known, which makes
deliberations on realism, most notably Jakobson’s article of 1921, “On Realism it possible for me, without further rehearsal, to concentrate on one resilient mis-
in Art.”33 But the field was also shaped by the lingering presence in the 1930s of apprehension.37 It has become customary among students of this period to claim
a fatigued Russian Formalism (above all, by Shklovsky, who polemicized openly
and covertly against Lukács) and by Mikhail Bakhtin’s powerful responses to
36. Mikhail Lifshits, “Iz avtobiografii idej” [From the entre l’Est et l’Ouest, 109– 30. On the relations between the
Lukács’s theory, which were unpublished (if not unheard) at the time.34 autobiography of ideas], in Kontekst 1987 (Moscow: Nauka, Czech avant-garde and the Prague Linguistic Circle with
Lukács’s theory of the novel was, in John Neubauer’s apt phrasing, an 1988): 264 – 319. reference to aesthetics, semiotics, and linguistics, see Věra
Linhartová, “La place de Roman Jakobson dans la vie lit-
“inscription of homelessness,” cultural, social, and — one might add — method- 37. The literature on Russian Formalism and the Russian
téraire et artistique tschécoslovaque,” in Roman Jakobson:
avant-garde is vast; for earlier comprehensive statements,
ological.35 In the late 1920s and early 1930s in Moscow, Stalinist orthodoxy see, e.g., Aage Hansen-Löve, Der russische Formalismus:
Echoes of His Scholarship, ed. Daniel Armstrong and C. H.
van Schooneveld (Lisse: Peter de Ridder, 1977), 219 – 35;
meant (as Lukács’s friend Mikhail Lifshits has recalled) that it was extremely Methodologische Rekonstruktion seiner Entwicklung aus dem
Thomas G. Winner, “Roman Jakobson and Avantgarde
Prinzip der Verfremdung (Vienna: Verlag der Österreich-
difficult to promote unsanctioned disciplines such as Marxist aesthetics, let alone Art,” in Armstrong and Schooneveld, Roman Jakobson,
ischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1978); Christopher
503 –14; Vratislav Effenberger, “Roman Jakobson and the
Pike, “Introduction: Russian Formalism and Futurism,” in
Czech Avant-garde between Two Wars,” American Journal
The Futurists, the Formalists, and the Marxist Critique, ed.
of Semiotics 2.3 (1983): 13 – 21; Jindrich Toman, “A Mar-
Pike (London: Ink Links, 1979): 1– 38; more recently, and
vellous Chemical Laboratory . . . and Its Deeper Meaning:
32. For more on this episode of Lukács’s intellectual 34. See Tihanov, “Viktor Shklovskii and Georg Lukács in with special reference to Jakobson, see Stephen Rudy,
Notes on Roman Jakobson and the Czech Avant-Garde
career, see in Tihanov, The Master and the Slave: Lukács, the 1930s,” Slavonic and East European Review 78.1 (2000): “Jakobson-Aljagrov and Futurism,” in Pomorska et al.,
between the Two Wars,” in Pomorska et al., Language,
Bakhtin, and the Ideas of Their Time (Oxford: Clarendon 44 – 65. Language, Poetry and Poetics, 277 – 90; Boris Gasparov,
Poetry, and Poetics, 313 – 46; Winner, “The Czech Interwar
Press, 2000), 39 – 43. “Futurism and Phonology: Futurist Roots of Jakobson’s
35. Cf. John Neubauer, “Bakhtin versus Lukács: Inscrip- Avantgarde and the Prague Linguistic Circle,” in Semantic
Approach to Language,” in Gadet and Sériot, Jakobson
33. Jakobson, “O realismu v umění” [On realism in art], tions of Homelessness in Theories of the Novel,” Poetics
Červen no 4 (1921) 300 304 Today 17 4 (winter 1996) 531 46
 115

75
that both Russian Formalism and the Prague Circle were born of avant-garde

76
Milota Zdirad Polák, though today regarded as minor, drew the attention of
experiments with form that demanded scholarly rationalization. It has not been Mukařovský, who analyzed his poem “The Sublimity of Nature” in a major trea-

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
sufficiently acknowledged, however, that the programs and ideas of these two tise published in 1934.42 This persistent interest in Romanticism, among both
groups reached back to preoccupations emblematic of the Romantic literary and Russian and Czechoslovak theorists, may have been grounded in the intrinsic
critical tradition. In Russia, the keen interest of the Symbolists in metrics and the links between Romanticism and the avant-garde, whose experiments the For-
theory of verse was a mediating link. As Jakobson reminisced in conversations malists and the Prague Circle held in high esteem. The connection, often medi-
with Krystyna Pomorska, Andrei Bely’s “idea of verse as the immediate object of ated and thus overlooked, between modern literary theory and the agenda of
analysis made an indelible mark on me.”38 More important, Jakobson credited Romantic art and philosophy of culture may be observed also in the genesis of
Fedor Buslaev, a Russian scholar in the Romantic tradition, with passing on to the modern German discourse on literature, which was shaped through impulses
the young Formalists some of their essential ideas and principles: originating in the literary output of Romantics like Novalis and E. T. A. Hoff-
mann. The two streams — the home tradition and the tradition of German (and
The tradition of tying the study of language closely to that of literature English) Romanticism—converged in a seminal way in Russia, where the ground
was established at the University of Moscow in the eighteenth century, for the Formalist idea of autonomous literary art was prepared with the impor-

•
and was particularly cultivated by one of the greatest Slavicists of the last

Tihanov
tant mediation of Viktor Zhirmunskii. His expertise on German Romanticism
century, Fedor Ivanovich Buslaev (1818–1897), who had inherited from
and, above all, his early work on the composition of lyric poems (1921) helped
Romanticism the idea of the existence of an intimate link between lin-
set the scene of Formalist inquiry during the years before his interest in the com-
guistics and the study of literature in both its aspects, written and oral.39
parative history of Romanticism (Byron, Pushkin) began to be thought insuf-
ficiently radical by old colleagues among the Formalists.43
In light of this recognition, we can better understand Jakobson’s and
Furthermore, the intimate link between Romanticism and the inception of
Mukařovský’s criticism of Saussure, and especially of the opposition that he posed
modern literary theory is once again suggestive of the dialectic between national
between synchrony and diachrony. By making room for the historical modifica-
and cosmopolitan tendencies in Eastern and Central Europe. Historically, in
tions that language and literature undergo in the process of their dissemination
these countries Romanticism (and the various strains of post-Romanticism)
and appropriation, the Prague Circle attempted to explain language from the
became the chief provider of literary texts for the new national canons. No other
dialectical perspectives of product and function, identity and change, thus taking
literary movement was able to institute a better diet of local pride, national
up and fleshing out Wilhelm von Humboldt’s idea of language as always both
enthusiasm, and universalist human values. The significance of Romantic liter-
ergon and energeia. This theoretical baggage could be “borrowed” from Roman- ature here was twofold: it promoted the virtues of national independence and
ticism and rendered relevant only by means of a parallel engagement with uniqueness while advocating interest in perennial human passions, independent
Romantic poetry and prose.40 A significant number of the key Formalists’ stud- of historical settings and landscape. The Romantic text was thus cognate with the
ies dealt with Pushkin and Lermontov, while the Prague Circle rediscovered foundational paradox inherent in some of the best examples of early literary the-
the Romantics Karel Hynek Mácha (the object of important studies by both ory. That paradox can be formulated in one ramified sentence. It is possible to
Mukařovský and Jakobson) and Karel Erben.41 Another Czech Romantic poet, think about and theorize literature per se, beyond national constraints, yet the
importance of literature per se as a subject of theory is validated by analyzing
39. Jakobson and Pomorska, Dialogues, 10.
texts that had been — or are being — canonized as nationally significant; the pro-
Analysis of the Literary Texts, ed. Eric de Haard, Thomas cess of canonization results from practices that are often consonant with, and
Langerak, and Willem G. Weststeijn (Amsterdam: Else- 40. Jakobson understood structuralism as a synthesis
vier, 1990), 637 – 47; Toman, “Where Jakobson and the derived from “European romantic scholarship” (serving modeled on, the construction of nation-states.
Dadaists (Temporarily) Converged,” in Roman Jakobson: as a thesis) and positivism (antithesis); cf. Jakobson,
Texts, Documents, Studies/Teksty, Dokumenty, Issledovaniia, “Společná řeč kultury: Poznámki k otázkám vzájemných
ed. Henryk Baran et al. (Moscow: RGGU, 1999), 897 – styků sovětské a západní vědy” [The common language of
culture: Notes on the problems of contacts between Soviet 42. See Galan, Historic Structures, 45. istorii romanticheskoi poemy [Byron and Pushkin: From the
906; Frank Illing, Jan Mukařovský und die Avantgarde: Die
and Western scholarship], Země sovětů 4 (1935): 110. history of the Romantic poem] (Leningrad: Academia,
strukturalistische Aesthetik im Kontext von Poetismus und Sur- 43. Cf. Viktor Zhirmunskii, Kompozitsiia liricheskikh stik-
1924).
realismus (Bielefeld: Aisthesis-Verlag, 2001). hotvorenii [The composition of lyric poems] (St. Peters-
41. Jakobson and Pomorska, Dialogues, 143.
burg: OPOIAZ, 1921); Zhirmunskii, Bairon i Pushkin: Iz
38. Jakobson and Pomorska, Dialogues (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1983), 5.
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77
Regimes of Relevance

78
individual.46 I. A. Richards’s practical criticism, a pedagogy more than a theo-
The Romantic background of modern literary theory, and the major role of retical program, predominated. Even though Richards, like the Russian For-

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
Romanticism in Eastern and Central Europe as a reservoir of texts for the malists, was adamant that criticism should be freed from biography and that the
national literary canons, brings us to the crucial issue of institutional factors in link between author and text should be diminished, his overall principles differed
the rise of modern literary theory. To deal with this issue requires my introduc- more significantly from theirs than is commonly believed.47 Poetic synesthesia,
ing the principle of relevance. The history of ideas about literature can be told which interested Richards, was said to mobilize all human faculties and con-
as the history of attempts to conceptualize the changing regimes of its relevance. tribute to improving “intimate relations with other human beings.”48 Even when
By “regime of relevance” (a concept of Foucauldian provenance), I mean the Richards moved to Harvard and, in his later years there, experienced the influence
prevalent mode of literary consumption in a society at a particular time. Any of Jakobson, he never embraced the notion of a “poetic function” separating lit-
given regime or mode is shaped by social and institutional factors that tend to erature from other discourses. Bentham’s utilitarian equation of distinct practices
function in competition and conflict with each other. It seems to me that the rise and discourses can be heard in Richards’s recommendation of “the lure of high
of literary theory as an autonomous discourse was dependent on the pronounced mountaineering” as an activity providing stimulation not substantially different
belief in (a very specific type of ) relevance of literature to society. The preoc- from that obtained in any other endeavor.49

Tihanov •
cupation with literature in strictly theoretical terms, as sublimely detached from Given the widely shared belief in the practical value of literature — how-
ever differently that value may have been interpreted in Eastern Europe and the
social and political concerns and struggles, represented itself solely as a reaction
West in the early twentieth century —writing about literature from the perspec-
against a long-established Eastern European tradition of glorifying literature
tive of pure literariness appeared to many in Eastern Europe as such a crucial
as the most important voice in public debates over the nature of political life and
change that it concealed an otherwise obvious continuity. The practice of liter-
the values of society. Literary theory purported to represent a clean break from
ary theory was just another manifestation, in a very different guise and a very dif-
the very idea of literature’s relevance. But that self-representation deserves a
ferent set of historical circumstances, of belief in the relevance of literature. Lit-
closer look.
erary theory — it is perhaps time to summarize — came about at a certain point
The exceptional respect for literature as a social tribune and national voice
and dwindled away at another point in time as, precisely, the conceptual product
in Eastern Europe was reflected in the early institutionalization of its study. At
of a new regime of relevance for literature. Just as there are historically distinct
the university level, the first chair of Russian literature in Russia was established
regimes of relevance, so too there are distinct forms of conceptualizing particu-
in 1835 (though survey courses were offered even earlier).44 For comparison, the
lar regimes and the transitions between them. A new form of conceptualization
first chair of English literature in England was not established until 1852 (at Uni- is the reliable, if often belated, sign of the arrival of a new regime of relevance,
versity College, London), and the first chair at Harvard was not occupied until as whose product it eventually emerges. Thus despite the many, if subtle, links
1876. At Oxford, a school of English did not exist before 1894; at Cambridge, and shades between regimes of relevance in the twentieth century, we can say that
undergraduate degrees in English were not awarded before 1916.45 Anglophone literary theory emerged in Eastern and Central Europe in the interwar decades
discourses on literature were determined by a regime of relevance somewhat dif- as one of the conceptual products of the transition from a regime of relevance
ferent from that in Eastern Europe: while the idea of the social value of litera-
ture was firmly shared in both cases, English literature was viewed from early on
less as a tool of nation building or a channel of political influence and more as a 46. In a different context, Cornis-Pope and Neubauer and Futurism,” 30) ought to be strongly qualified. For
rightly observe that literature was institutionalized earlier more on New Criticism (which recognized Richards as its
practice that contributes to the well-being of society by enhancing the life of the
in societies with problematic national identities — such as founder) and Russian Formalism, see Ewa M. Thompson,
in Eastern and Central Europe (including Germany) — Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism (The
rather than in nations that had “a robust self-image,” such Hague: Mouton, 1971).
as England and France (cf. Cornis-Pope and Neubauer,
48. I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary
44. Andy Byford is writing an interesting doctoral thesis 45. A concise and useful survey of the history of the insti- Towards a History of the Literary Cultures in East-Central
Judgement (1929; reprint, New York: Harcourt Brace,
at Oxford on the history and the institutions of literary tutionalization of English as an academic subject (includ- Europe: Theoretical Reflections, American Council of Learned
1966), 295.
scholarship in Russia; I am grateful to him for directing ing most of the dates adduced above) can be found in Wal- Societies Occasional Papers, no. 52 [New York: American
my attention to some important sources of information on lace Martin, “Criticism and the Academy,” in Modernism Council of Learned Societies, 2002], 12). 49. My discussion of Richards draws here on Paul Fry’s
the subject. and the New Criticism, ed. A. Walton Litz, Louis Menand, excellent analysis in Litz, Menand, and Rainey, Modernism
47. The snappy label describing Richards as “the English
and Lawrence Rainey, vol. 7 of The Cambridge History of and the New Criticism, chap. 8, esp. 191– 93.
Shklovsky” (cf. Pike, “Introduction: Russian Formalism
Literary Criticism, chap. 14.
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79
that recognizes literature for its role in social and political practice to a regime

80
and with devastating consequences for literary theory in Russia. Similarly, in the
that values literature primarily for its qualities as an art. Literary theory, however, 1960s we can begin to discern the complex overlap of all three regimes that I have

The Disregardable “Second World”

COMMON KNOWLEDGE
was only one such form of conceptualization, though probably the most repre- described: a lingering appreciation of literature on the basis of literariness; the
sentative and interesting: the regime of artistic relevance (as opposed to that of eruptive sway of literature in social and political discussions at universities in
social and political relevance) had been in evidence, after all, since long before Paris, Prague, and Berkeley; and finally, the withdrawal into private consump-
the seventy years during which literary theory flourished. This regime emerged tion of literature as a largely escapist medium in the face of increasingly medi-
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century as a response to the changing sta- ated forms of communication and the enhanced commodification of leisure.
tus of art in the bourgeois marketplace; it made its first important, but self- Today, the regime of relevance validating literature as a source of experience and
contradictory and not always consequential, moves in the work of the Romantics entertainment overlaps with the freshly transfigured regime of social and polit-
(hence the significant if often vague role of Romanticism in the work of mod- ical relevance exemplified in the struggle for “representative” national and global
ern literary theorists); it continued through the years of aestheticism and l’art canons. What we need especially to bear in mind while studying literature and
pour l’art, down into the first decades after World War II, with the American literary culture is that, while quite different regimes of relevance coexist at any
New Criticism as its high point and death knell. The demise of literary theory one time, one of them comes to the fore —whether manifestly or obliquely —

Tihanov •
as the leading component in the mix.
has by now confirmed the transition to a third regime of relevance, where increas-
Modern literary theory, then, is the product of a regime of relevance that
ingly literature is not recognized for its social and political weight, nor indeed for
validates literature for its presumed artistic originality. That regime emerged as
some presumed aesthetic uniqueness, but is rather evaluated in a more low-key
primary in interwar Central and Eastern Europe because historical conditions
regime of relevance for what it can provide in terms of practically useful expe-
happened to be most propitious there and then. A summary of these conditions
rience or entertainment or therapy.
would single out three basic points. First: in none of the four countries involved
In any given period, different regimes of relevance are of course simulta-
(Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia) was there a strong domestic tradition
neously available. Instead of working in isolation, they are engaged in forms of
of philosophy that could impose its authority and thereby prevent the purpose-
exchange and competition. This competition is reflected, for example, in the
ful transformation and modification of established philosophical discourses into
inner diversity of Russian Formalism, with the Opoiaz group more uncompro-
tools of literary theory. The intelligentsia in these countries lived after World
misingly inclined to judge literature on the basis of literariness, and the Moscow
War I on borrowed philosophical capital, mainly of German-Austrian prove-
Linguistic Circle interested to an extent in the sociological aspects of verbal art.50
nance; and it was intellectuals from these four countries who were most active in
A good example of this interpenetration and competition of regimes within the the process of bending traditional German philosophy in the direction of
space of a single article is Jakobson’s 1919 piece “The Tasks of Artistic Propa- aesthetics and literary theory. Second: having been parts of (by-then-defunct)
ganda,” where he uses Marxist parlance and arguments to champion a Formal- empires before World War I (or having been an empire in its own right, in the
ist and futurist agenda.51 The interaction of regimes of relevance also explains, case of Russia), each of the four countries was a natural locus of polyglossia and
to a degree at least, the attempts of the Formalists and the Prague Circle to par- heterotopia (exile), providing — sometimes at the cost, and in the form, of bit-
ticipate in the struggle for the distribution of social and cultural capital in the new ter ethnic conflicts — a painfully beneficial environment for theoretical contem-
states. Perhaps needless to say, the regime of social and political relevance was plation of literature beyond the presumed naturalness of native tongues and tra-
eventually imposed by force at the expense of the regime of aesthetic relevance, ditions. Third: in all four countries, there existed a unique blend of alienation
from and identification with the type of nation-state formation characteristic of
50. A good description of the way in which the study of 51. Jakobson, “Zadachi khudozhestvennoi propagandy” the period — an ambivalence suggestive of the complex interaction between the
folklore and dialectology were imbued with elements of [The tasks of artistic propaganda], Iskusstvo, no. 8, Sep-
inherited and new regimes of relevance by which literature was judged and con-
sociological analysis is offered in Matejka, “Sociological tember 5, 1919. Jakobson adduced a quotation from Marx
Concerns in the Moscow Linguistic Circle,” in Pomorska to promote novelty and experiment in form: “There sumed.
et al., Language, Poetry, and Poetics, 307 –12. Matejka sin- comes a moment for all forms when they ‘are transformed It was only because of the confluence of these historical conditions that
gles out the attention to sociological analysis as a major from forms of development of productional forces into
avant-garde literary practices—not at all specific to Central and Eastern Europe—
difference between the Moscow wing of Formalism and their chains’ ” (quoted in Rudy, “Jakobson-Aljagrov and
Opoiaz (of which Jakobson and Bogatyrev wrote as early Futurism,” in Pomorska et al., Language, Poetry, and Poet- demanded and triggered the process of their rationalization in literary theory
as 1922 in their article “Slavic Philology in Russia between ics, 285).
1914 –1921”; cf. Matejka, “Sociological Concerns,” in
Pomorska et al Language Poetry and Poetics 311)
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81
precisely in those countries.52 The centrality of Central and Eastern European
literary culture to that process was therefore, like any great cultural achievement,

The Disregardable “Second World”

a product of both deeper structural trends and unpredictable contingencies.
Unraveling this combination cannot unravel the achievement or diminish the
credit due to those who attained it. And I might add, by way of closing: the
inverse may be said of those involved in the accomplishment’s demise.

Tihanov •

52. Versions of this article were given in oral presentations
at the 2001 convention of the American Association for the
Advancement of Slavic Studies; the Whitney Humanities
Center, Yale University; the University of Pennsylvania;
McMaster University; and the University of Western
Ontario. The author wishes to thank Thomas Seifrid,
Michael Holquist, Peter Steiner, Nina Kolesnikoff, and
Clive Thomson for their invitations and comments.
He also wishes to thank Svetlana Boym, Katerina Clark,
Caryl Emerson, Laura Engelstein, Maroussia Hajdukowski-
Ahmed, John MacKay, Irina Paperno, Brian Poole,
Michael Wachtel, Alexander Zholkovsky, and especially
John Neubauer for suggestions and criticism. An earlier
and significantly shorter version of this paper appeared in
Russian in Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, as well as in Slovene
and Bulgarian translation. Research was supported by a
Lancaster University research grant.
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